They had something that all the other bands on saturday naturally lacked: the home field advantage. The riot robots" were the only band from the district of kronach in the afternoon on the big stage at "die festung rockt. With "rowdy robots but markus wachter, martin hiksch and jan stein have little in common.
The fortress rocks 2019: click here for the pictures
On the contrary: sympathetic, down-to-earth and with a lot of passion they played melodic punk rock for the visitors. But the secret star of the performance was undoubtedly the mascot "bender". Who was in the robot costume and why they don’t like to call themselves local patriots, markus and martin told us.
The most urgent question first: who did you put into the robot costume??
Markus: that is secret. (laughs)
Martin: actually it is secret. (laughs) but it was markus, a good friend of us. For the eyes it was of course a highlight and he really made a very good figure as a robot.
So you came up with something special for the festival performance?
Martin: yes, you have to. It’s a special highlight to play as a regional band with big names like zebrahead or the emil bulls. We had a new banner printed especially for the gig. Then we had the awesome robot with us and tried to deliver a good show.
Markus: and hopefully we succeeded – spab did it in any case.
That was surely the biggest concert of your band history so far – how many people have you played in front of otherwise??
Markus: in hausen we played a concert in front of about 150 to 200 people – but today was already by far the biggest one so far.
2600 visitors were not yet there in the afternoon, but still some people – how excited were you today?
Martin: pays yesterday already? I was already excited yesterday.
Markus: yes, i think we all were.
Is that maybe also because you are from kronach?? What does it mean to you to play here at the fortress??
Martin: that is already a rough number. Not only in kronach this is the festival par excellence, also in all neighboring counties.
Max: we also have "hometome" for a reason as our last song so chosen and also made the announcement to it. We talked about how unfortunate it is that more and more people are moving away from the countryside to the city. There’s something going on here, and it’s not so bad here after all.
Martin: and one must also emphasize: a small town has its own charm. You know the people, the locations – you’re just at home. And kronach is colorful, is multicultural. We have a nice piece of earth here that we share peacefully with people from all countries and make them feel welcome.
So you are real local patriots?
Martin: honestly: the word patriot sounds so negative to me – so right-wing. We were born here, we are at home here and we like it here. Point.
You made a clear statement against the right on stage – how important is it for you as a band to be political??
Martin: we are a punk band. And a punk band has to be political. It is very important to us that we are clearly against the right, against racism and against fascism. This is our conviction. With our song "no racism we also want to show this in our music and sing against right-wing sentiment mongering.